Comments

I wonder if $10 would be enough on 1 condition - those who participated in the wrongful conviction, i.e. prosecutors, police officers, and so forth - they must spend the next 10 years of their lives in prison with the prison population believing they are sex offenders. That would be justice. No amount of money could make up for 10 years lost.

Gee, Sted, when you put it that way, it sounds like a pretty good deal. As I look at the remainder of my productive work-life, I won't make even a million dollars by the time I retire - and that's about twice as long as the ten-year sentence.

The dilemma is, however, if I were to invest ten years to earn 7.5 million, by the time I got out, I'd have no way to spend it all.

Even if he was lucky enough to make 100,000/yr he still would have only 1 million! Come on, do the math! Is it too much? DUH!

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Assuming he worked 8 hour days, not 24. And those additional 16 hours a day are important.

During those 16 hours he would have slept without fearing rape. He would have showered without fearing being shanked. He could have developed hobbies, gone to the movies, read books, gone to school, become a war hero, etc. He could have been with his wife and daughter.

Instead he was in prison. He was labeled as a sex offender. He had to lie to get out of prison and had to live a lie once he was out and labeled a sex offender.

He didn't just lose 10 years in prison. He lost all the time he fought to clear his name. All the time his name was tarnished and people he loved avoided him.

I don't know how much that time and lost opportunity is worth in dollars, but 7.5m is a good start. A good finish would be to punish those who put him there or at least name them publicly so they can be shunned and lose their jobs.

As KS eludes to - half of that will disappear in taxes, then I'm sure there will be lawyer / legal fees on top of that - probably amounting to half of what is left. I'd say he'd be lucky to pocket 2 million of that. Invest that even at 10% annual return is only going to net 200K/yr - and half of that will again disappear in taxes. So this settlement is probably going to net barely over 100K/yr in steady income. The amount can be debated ad-nauseum - what are 10 of the best years of your life worth? Mr Lowery obviously deserves compensation for the error.

What he deserves more is to know exactly why the system failed him, how it has changed so this can not happen again - and if it can be narrowed down to specific individuals (a 'la the "Duke rape case") who was responsible, and to see appropriate punishment brought against them.

That's about $750k per year for doing nothing more than sitting in prison. I'm not going to say the guy shouldn't be compensated, but there are an awful lot of hardworking folks out there that don't make $750k in 20 or even 30 years, let alone one.

Brad, don't be so obtuse. Prison life isn't peaches and cream. Plus, as has already been stated, he missed out on some of the best years of his life. IIRC, his daughter was 3 y.o. when he was locked up. No way to get those years back.

Bad_Brad, those other hardworking folks also haven't had their Constitutional due process rights violated by the State. The purpose of which rights is to prevent essentially what happened to this man. The outrage should not be at this man or the settlement; it should be at the government that messed up so badly.